Rescuers focused on the Yunmen Tsuiti residential building that was tilted at a nearly 45-degree angle, erecting long steel beams to prevent it from collapsing.

Maintenance worker Chen Ming Hui, who was rescued from the basement of the Marshall hotel, where two people died, said: "At first it wasn't that big ... we get this sort of thing all the time and it's really nothing, but then it got really terrifying."

Six mainland Chinese were also injured, the Chinese Communist Party-run People's Daily reported.